Joe Strong the Boy Fire-Eater eBook

It was hung from a heavy, slack wire from the brick
walls of two opposite buildings, and the banner attracted
considerable attention because of a novel picture
on it.

Joe and Helen were standing in the street, looking
up at the swaying creation of canvas and netting,
when a woman’s cry came to their ears.

“Look! Look! The cat! The cat
is walking the wire!” she exclaimed.

Joe and Helen turned first to see who it was that
had cried out. It was a woman in the street,
and with her parasol she pointed upward.

There, surely enough, half way out on the thick, slack
wire, and high above the middle of the street was
a large white cat. It was walking the wire as
one’s pet might walk the back fence. But
this cat seemed to have lost its nerve. It had
got half way across, but was afraid to go farther
and could not turn around and go back.

As Joe and Helen looked, a woman appeared at the window
of one of the buildings from the front walls of which
the banner was suspended, and, pointing at the cat,
cried:

CHAPTER XI

THE RESCUE

The tumult which had arisen in the street beneath
the banner when the crowd caught sight of the cat
was hushed for a moment after the woman’s frantic
cry. Before that there had been some laughter,
and not a few cat-calls and exaggerated “miaows”
from boys in the street. But now every one, even
the mischievous urchins, seemed to sense that something
unusual was about to take place.

“Come back, Peter! Come back!” cried
the woman, stretching out her arms to the cat from
the window out of which she leaned. “Come
back to me!”

The white cat on the wire heard the voice of the woman
and seemed to want to return to its mistress.
But either the cat was not an adept at turning on
such a narrow support, or it was afraid to try.

And, likewise, it was afraid to go forward. There
it stood, about in the middle of the wire, high above
the street, and it clung to its perch by its claws.

The banner was hung from the cross wire by means of
several loops of rope, and it was in some of these
loops that the cat had stuck its claws, and so hung
on.

As the cat remained there, suspended, the crowd in
the street below increased in size. But from
the time the woman had so frantically called there
had been no more of the cries from the crowd that might
be expected to frighten the animal.

“Will some one get my cat?” cried the
woman in a shrill voice, which could easily be heard
by Joe, Helen, and nearly every one else. “I’ll
give one hundred dollars in cash to whoever saves him!”
she went on. “Come back, Peter! Come
back!” she appealed.

There was a thoughtless laugh from some one at the
woman’s anxiety, and some one cried: